Rahul Gandhi’s ‘find’ questions Congress President selection process

Many of the youngsters and the ‘Rahul Gandhi establishment’ are unsure of their own future once a new leadership emerges.

NEW DELHI: Amid lingering confusion and delay in the Congress in appointing a new party chief following Rahul Gandhi’s resignation, Sachin Rao –– a ‘find’ of Gandhi’s talent hunt and an invitee to the Congress Working Committee (CWC) –– has shot off a letter to all CWC members, complaining that the ongoing process lacked transparency. He has demanded that the CWC meet to formally frame the selection process, sources told ET.

In his letter, Rao lamented that he can “only speculate” about the process which is underway to select the new party chief, sources in the AICC secretariat have revealed. This is being seen as this permanent CWC invitee’s unhappiness about not being in the loop about the ongoing internal deliberations. While making him an invitee to the CWC, Gandhi had also made Rao –– a lateral entry into the party leadership who had implemented some ‘experiments’ on behalf of Gandhi –– the AICC incharge of training and the party’s mouthpiece ‘Sandesh’.

Some Congress leaders are now speculating on what has prompted Rao to write to the CWC members –– whether it is a spontaneous expression of his inner feelings or, whether he has been fielded by the ‘higher ups’. His letter coincides with a group of senior leaders contacting the CWC members, seeking their individual choice for the new Congress president. As this internal exercise progressed, a formula for appointing a “provisional party president” along with a kind of steering committee to kickstart organisational elections has been arrived at, pending CWC approval. Meanwhile, AICC general secretaries will hold a meeting on Wednesday to finalise the programmes for Rajiv Gandhi’s 75th birth anniversary.

Rao’s letter, incidentally, coincided with wheels-within-wheels emerging among the younger Congress leaders, who had initially tried to prevail upon Gandhi not to withdraw his resignation while advocating a cleaning of the top party echelons of senior leaders.

However, it is learnt that some younger leaders have now started a not-so-subtle whisper about how their team members such as Randeep Surjewala and Deepender Hooda are now part of the ‘search team’, seeking CWC members’ views on the next party president.

They have also, sources among them said, started noticing that RPN Singh, having initially ‘panned’ an informal narrative for the ‘take-over’ by youngsters, has now started finding virtues in the probable candidature of a Maharashtra Dalit leader for the top party post.

Many of these youngsters and the ‘Rahul Gandhi establishment’ are unsure of their own future once a new leadership emerges, and are edgy with some privately resenting calls to look for a new Gandhi –– Priyanka –– which means looking beyond Rahul in the long-term.

While the informal search for president became inevitable due to Rahul Gandhi’s stand that he “will not be part of the process to select” his successor, the search committee also faced some hiccups when two senior CWC members who were originally meant to be part of it –– AK Antony and Ambika Soni ––disassociated themselves from the exercise, some leaders said. Former AICC general secretary Janardan Dwivedi had recently said that Gandhi, while offering his resignation, should have also framed a formal consultative mechanism to find the new party chief. Meanwhile, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Monday reiterated his unhappiness about the delay in naming the Congress president and about the party’s “headless” status.